text:
A key benefit for workers replaced lost earnings for thousands of higher-income Canadians, providing a new glimpse at the scope of federal aid during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The $2,000-a-month Canada Emergency Response Benefit was a key part of the aid package the Liberals rolled out since March, paying out just over $81.6 billion in benefits to 8.9 million people until it ended at the start of October.
It was predominantly used by people who earned under $47,630 in 2019, figures from the Canada Revenue Agency show, but those higher up the income ladder also applied for the benefit program.
The CRA numbers show at least 114,620 people who earned between about $100,000 and $200,000 last year applied for the CERB. Another 14,070 people who had made more than $210,000 applied for the benefit.
Lindsay Tedds, a tax policy expert at the University of Calgary, noted that many higher-income earners saw their workplaces closed and self-employed workers had contracts suddenly cancelled, or invoices left unpaid.
"The point was to replace income that was lost due to the pandemic, lost because of government regulations shuttering the economy to control the virus," Tedds wrote in an email.
The CERB was available to anyone who had made at least $5,000 in the preceding 12 months, and whose income crashed because of the pandemic, either from a drop in hours or being unable to work.
Filing a tax return wasn't part of eligibility rules.
The issue earned a spot in the daily question period when the Conservatives asked about 823,580 recipients for whom the tax agency didn't have 2019 income information at the time it compiled the data.
The figures, in response to a written question, were as of Sept. 23, one week before the tax filing deadline of Sept. 30.
Conservative finance critic Pierre Poilievre said everyone who lost their jobs because of COVID-19-related shutdowns should have received the CERB, but he decried payment to what he called suspected fraud cases.
He asked what the government was doing to ensure "the money didn't go to people who didn't earn the right to receive it."
Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland responded by saying any fraud would be "completely unacceptable."
"The hardworking public servants in the CRA are doing an outstanding job and they are going to make sure that all claims are legitimate," she said.
The CRA said in a statement Thursday that "it would be erroneous to conclude" that CERB payments to those without a 2019 tax return were being paid to "fraudsters or to non-eligible individuals."
It added that officials will be checking claims against upcoming tax returns and payroll records to find any cases of wrongful payments.
People can still apply for back payments of the CERB until Dec. 2.
The latest figures on its replacement, the Canada Recovery Benefit, show the amount in benefits paid has risen to over $2.72 billion given to more than 1.1 million people since it became available in late September.
A wage subsidy program, which has so far paid out $48 billion, and an emergency loan program round out some of the measures the Liberals took to keep employees on payrolls, and companies from going under.
The Senate passed the government's latest measures for businesses on Thursday, paving the way for a new commercial rent-relief program, extra help to companies subject to lockdowns, and an extension of the wage subsidy program to next summer.
Royal assent was expected later Thursday.
Data from the national statistics agency on Thursday showed companies that used the business loan program in the spring often put the money toward paying wages and suppliers.
Over half of businesses polled by Statistics Canada that received loans early on in the pandemic said the money was key to them keeping their doors open.
In all, 756,115 loans have been approved, valued at $30.24 billion, according to other figures tabled in the House of Commons this week.
The figures are up to Sept. 23, and show construction and retail companies in the top two spots for where the loans have gone by industry. About $9.8 billion in loans went to small businesses with earnings under $65,000.
Jordan Press, The Canadian Press
Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.
Want to support local journalism? Make a donation here.


text:
Dear Cecil: Since I live in Alabama and don't come in contact with that many Muslims, I thought I'd just ask you. When Muslims must face Mecca and pray, which way do they face? Since our planet is round, one could really face Mecca going east or west. Is there some line that is the switching point between Muslims who face east and Muslims who face west? Mark Godfrey, Fairhope, Alabama
Cecil replies:
Guys like you are the reason the Saracens wanted to slay the infidels, Mark. However, you've accidentally hit upon an interesting question.
The direction Muslims must face when they pray is called the qibla. What they face, strictly speaking, is not Mecca but the revered Kaaba (spellings vary), the central shrine in Mecca's Great Mosque, which is Islam's holiest place. As one might suppose, the qibla varies from place to place, but an effort is made to enforce uniformity in any given location. In places where Muslims are accustomed to praying, it's not uncommon to see the qibla indicated by an arrow on the ceiling with the legend Makkah (Mecca). You want to make sure you get lined up right, because a prayer carelessly sent in the wrong direction is invalid, or so some believe.
I know what you're thinking, bubba. Those nutty Arabs! Listen, it's no wackier than the Jewish dietary laws or Aquinas's angels dancing on the head of a pin. Besides, determination of the qibla has had practical benefits for Islamic civilization.
In the early days of the faith, determining the local qibla was a pretty basic proposition. According to the noted eighth-century imam Abu Hanifah, "The qibla of the people of the western countries is toward east; the qibla of the people of the eastern countries is toward west; the qibla of the people of the southern countries is toward north; and the qibla of the people of the northern countries is toward south."
This may not seem like the world's most exacting standard, but don't be fooled — it taxed the science of the day. Various methods were proposed to determine direction, such as prevailing winds, mountains, etc., but the most reliable by far was felt to be sighting on Polaris, the north star. This, along with the need to compute prayer times based on sun location, gave rise to an interest in astronomy, navigation, and related subjects that put the Muslim world centuries ahead of Europe.
As time went on and scientific understanding improved, the determination of the qibla became increasingly precise. Today you can use a personal computer to determine the qibla to within fractions of a degree of arc for most major cities on the globe. (See for example http://www.qiblalocator.com/)
But it's still easy to get messed up. If you look at a standard flat map of the world, you notice that New York is north of the 40th parallel, while Mecca is south of the 22nd parallel. Therefore the local qibla must be approximately east by southeast, right? Wrong. The computer and most Muslim authorities agree that the qibla in North America is to the northeast, ranging from 56.3 degrees for Washington, D.C., to 23.7 degrees for Los Angeles.
How can this be? Because the typical flat map uses Mercator projection, which distorts the curvature of the earth. But get a globe and stretch a thread between Mecca and any point in North America, and sure enough, you find that the shortest distance, and thus the true direction of the qibla, is northeast. The qibla and the thread follow a so-called great circle, the same route that would be followed by a nonstop jet. (To be fair, this confuses some Muslims, too — for an opinion on the subject, see www.al-islam.org/ organizations/AalimNetwork/msg00614.html.)
Having thus grasped the complexity of the issue, we are now equipped to answer your question. Since the operative principle in determining the qibla is the shortest distance, there is a unique qibla for every point on earth except two. The first is (duh) the location of the Kaaba itself. The second is the point precisely opposite it on the globe. If we ignore variations in the curvature of the earth, this point is equidistant in all directions from Mecca. Thus one could argue that the qibla is in any direction one cares to turn — an ambiguity that the timorous may find unsettling. But since the point is in the middle of the South Pacific, I'm not going to get too excited about it for now.
Cecil Adams
Send questions to Cecil via firstname.lastname@example.com.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
A MUSH (acronym for Multi-User Shared Hallucination) is a type of MUD which is often used for social and role-playing activities. It is derived from "Tinymud", an early mud server. Its distinguishing features are that any player can typically extend the virtual world by building new rooms and objects, and its internal programming language, MUSHcode, which is considered to be fairly easy to learn and preferred by many.
There are a number of flavors of MUSH server freely available to those who want to run their own MUSHes: TinyMUSH 3.0, TinyMUX 2.4, and PennMUSH 1.8.x. TinyMUSH uses a disk-based database, while PennMUSH keeps its database in the computer's memory (TinyMUX can do either). This makes PennMUSH suitable for computers which have plenty of memory or little disk space. From a user standpoint they offer many similar features and a very similar command parser.[1]
MUSHes are similar to MUCKs in that they carry many users for either out of character (OOC) or in character (IC) purposes. Like MUCKs, MUSHes are not necessarily furry, but some do have furry themes.
Types of MUSH Servers[edit]
There are four major MUSH code bases currently in use[2]:
- TinyMUSH - TinyMUSH 3.x is based on a merge of TinyMUSH 2.2 and TinyMUX 1.x. TinyMUSH 2.2 is based on TinyMUSH 2.0 which is based on TinyCRWU and PernMUSH (the code) which are in turn based on MicroMUSE, TinyMUSH 1.0, and ultimately from TinyMUD.
- PennMUSH - PennMUSH derives from PernMUSH (the code), MicroMUSE, TinyMUSH 1.0 and ultimately from TinyMUD.
- TinyMUX - TinyMUX 2.0 is based on TinyMUX 1.x which in turn is based on TinyMUSH 2.0 and ultimately TinyMUD.
- RhostMUSH - RhostMUSH 3.9 is based on the RhostMUSH 3.2.4 which is based on RhostMUSH 2.0/1.0 and ultimately TinyMUD.
- M*U*S*H - The live sandbox for projects on the PennMUSH code base and also the official MUSH used as the testing ground for new PennMUSH server code updates. All patches are tested there first before being released to the public. This is primarily an OOC MUSH.
- Shangrila - Adult-oriented MUX, attaining anywhere from over 200 to almost 600 connections.
- Beast Wars Transformers MUSH
- FurryMUSH
- Loneport MUSH
- My Little Pony MUSH
- Pokémorph MUSH
- Starfox MUSH
- Thunder Trails MUSH
- Wild Spirits MUSH
See Also[edit]
- ↑ PennMUSH.org
- ↑ History from the TinyMUX wiki
Text-based multiplayer worlds | ||
Oldest still running
FurryMUCK (1990) - FurToonia (1994) - RealmsMUCK (1993) - Sociopolitical Ramifications (1994) - Tapestries MUCK (1991) - TigerMUCK (1994)


text:
- Health
Patient Care
I Want To...
I Want To...
Find Research Faculty
Enter the last name, specialty or keyword for your search below.
School of Medicine
I Want to...
Apply for Admission
Johns Hopkins Medicine Community Mourns the Death of Internationally Renowned Pediatric Neurologist John M. Freeman - 01/06/2014
Johns Hopkins Medicine Community Mourns the Death of Internationally Renowned Pediatric Neurologist John M. Freeman
He revolutionized the treatment of pediatric epilepsy and advanced the development of modern biomedical ethics
Release Date: January 6, 2014
John M. Freeman, an internationally renowned Johns Hopkins pediatric neurologist and medical ethicist whose iconoclastic questioning of established medical practices revolutionized the treatment of pediatric epilepsy and advanced the development of modern biomedical ethics, died on Friday, Jan. 3, of cardiovascular disease. He was 80.
Freeman's forceful advocacy of two long-abandoned therapies—one requiring a strict, unconventional high-fat diet, the other involving surgery to remove half of the brain of children tormented by unremitting seizures—led to their revival and current acceptance as effective treatments.
In the early 1990s, Freeman, founding head of Johns Hopkins' Division of Pediatric Neurology and director of its Birth Defects Clinic, as well as director of what now is the John M. Freeman Pediatric Epilepsy Center, began reviving the use of the long-ignored ketogenic diet (KD) for the treatment of childhood epilepsy.
A high-fat, low-carbohydrate regimen that changes the body's metabolism so that the brain gets its energy from ketones, a fat byproduct, rather than glucose, or sugar, initially was developed in the 1920s, but it was largely abandoned once chemical antiseizure medications such as Dilantin (phenytoin) were created in the late 1930s. As recently as 1995, many physicians no longer considered the ketogenic diet a viable treatment.
Freeman's "resurrection" of the diet, which completely ended the epileptic seizures of many patients, was accomplished "virtually all by himself, against great skepticism and opposition," according to neurologist Guy McKhann, founding head of Johns Hopkins' Department of Neurology.
Among those who were permanently cured of epileptic seizures by Freeman's ketogenic diet was the son of Hollywood producer, writer and director Jim Abrahams, who then led an extensive publicity campaign to promote the treatment in the late 1990s.
Abrahams, whose films included Airplane and the Naked Gun series of comedies, created The Charlie Foundation, named for his son, to promote the diet. He produced an educational DVD for parents and health care professionals, collaborated on a Dateline program about KD, and produced a 1997 made-for-TV movie about it, First Do No Harm, narrated by his friend Meryl Streep. He also funded the first edition of Freeman's book, Ketogenic Diets: Treatments for Epilepsy and Other Disorders, written with Millicent Kelly and Jennifer Freeman. It now is in its fifth printing.
"John provided hope for my family when no one else would," Abrahams said. "He was utterly unafraid to take a position against most of his colleagues in favor of diet therapy for epilepsy based on decades of his experience when the science had yet to catch up. He and his team from Hopkins provided a cure for my son Charlie when no one else could."
Today, the ketogenic diet is a mainstream medical treatment, with centers now offering it in more than 45 countries worldwide. New studies indicate it may also be an effective treatment for autism, brain tumors, Alzheimer's disease and diabetes.
Freeman also was a mentor to Johns Hopkins' famed pediatric neurosurgeon Benjamin Carson, encouraging him to revive the long-abandoned use of hemispherectomies, or the removal of half of the brain, to curtail the crippling seizures suffered by young patients whose cases they shared.
"His partnership with Ben Carson proved that children devastated by intractable seizures could be restored to fully functional levels with hemispherectomy," says George Dover, director of the Johns Hopkins Children's Center.
Carson recalls Freeman as "a wonderful mentor and teacher" who "helped work out many of the techniques and problems associated with cerebral hemispherectomy, as well as many other neurosurgical issues affecting patients from around the world. He cared deeply about the patients and had very admirable relationships with many of them and their parents. His shoes will be hard to fill."
"John Freeman exemplified the very best attributes of a Hopkins professor," says Dover. "He mentored two generations of pediatric neurologists and pediatricians, many of whom are now leaders in their fields. His clinical acumen transcended conventional wisdom—or dogma—and he pushed all around him to think about better ways to treat pediatric neurology patients.
Among Freeman's protégés was Eileen P.G. "Patti" Vining, now a professor of neurology and pediatrics who became his successor as head of Johns Hopkins' pediatric epilepsy center that now bears his name.
"I grew up with him," Vining said, "and found much of the joy of medicine through him."
"He was stubborn—and he had great courage. When he realized that children with devastating epilepsies involving one half of their brains were doomed, he was able to convince hesitant surgeons to live in the present and begin to perform hemispherectomies again. He believed we had better procedures and technologies that would make it safe.
"He couldn't and wouldn't abandon those children and their families to a life without a rational option. They have loved him ever since."
Along with Vining and the late Diana J. Pillas, Freeman wrote the landmark, award-winning 1990 book, Seizures and Epilepsy in Childhood: A Guide for Parents. Now in its third edition, it is recognized as the standard resource for parents who need comprehensive medical information about their child with epilepsy.
In addition, Freeman conducted influential studies demonstrating that infants with fever-induced seizures do not require medication, showing that the side effects of medication can outweigh the benefits and that children who suffer only one or two such seizures can go untreated with little risk of recurrence.
An outspoken advocate of patient rights throughout his career, Freeman wrote extensively on the ethical and medical conundrums surrounding the treatment of severely ill newborns with congenital defects. In 2001, he published the still-influential book, Tough Decisions: A Casebook in Medical Ethics, co-authored with Kevin McConnell, professor of philosophy at Saint Mary's College, Notre Dame, Indiana.
George Dover observes that Freeman's "generation of pediatric neurologists often were faced with making diagnoses of conditions for which there was little if any therapy."
"It was this reality that I believe pushed him very early on to recognize and ask the toughest questions: Who do we treat and when does treatment cause more problems than not treating? He was a pioneer in bringing ethical considerations into the mainstream of the pediatric training programs at Hopkins. He and his wife, Elaine, have championed clinical scholarship for the formal training of ethics in the clinical training programs."
Freeman showed special concern for maintaining the dignity of individual patients and striving to ensure that each had as independent, fulfilling and as close to normal life as possible. He was the founding chairman of the Johns Hopkins Hospital Ethics Committee and co-director of an undergraduate medical student course in bioethics. He was a member of the original faculty of the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics and established the Freeman Family Fund in Clinical Bioethics to help support the salary of a faculty member to teach that subject.
"He was an institutional visionary," says Ruth Faden, director of the Berman Institute. "He really had this vision that we could have a world-class bioethics program at Hopkins if we never gave up. And we didn't give up, and we did get a phenomenal first-rate program here at Hopkins, and John was just critical; he was the person who had the unflagging confidence in a future for bioethics at Johns Hopkins."
Freeman also was "a phenomenal and extraordinary mentor," Faden says, helping to forge the careers of dozens of future pediatric neurologists. Employing a distinctive, highly effective teaching style, he spurred the development of his protégés' skills at critical thinking and their reluctance to accept received medical wisdom— attributes that went on to influence their subsequent, successful endeavors.
Ronald R. Peterson, president of The Johns Hopkins Hospital and Health System and executive vice president of Johns Hopkins Medicine, says, "Few Hopkins physicians have had a more profound effect than John Freeman on how we treat young patients who suffer from epilepsy and congenital abnormalities—and on how we address the often-difficult ethical issues surrounding these potentially heartbreaking cases."
"The sensitive, compassionate patient care to which The Johns Hopkins Hospital is dedicated has been enhanced immeasurably by John Freeman's unwavering concern for patient dignity and determination to improve the lives of those entrusted to his care.
"As the founding chairman of The Johns Hopkins Hospital's Ethics Committee, a member of the original faculty of the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics, and co-creator with his wife, Elaine Freeman, of the Freeman Family Fund in Clinical Bioethics, John Freeman ensured that even after his retirement from active practice, we constantly maintain the highest standards and deepest concern for all our patients," Peterson says.
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., Freeman was a 1954 honors graduate of Amherst College and a 1958 graduate of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. After completing his pediatrics internship and residency at Hopkins in 1961, he undertook a three-year fellowship in neurology and child neurology at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center. He then conducted two additional years of studies at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research before joining the faculty at Stanford University in 1966. He returned to Johns Hopkins in 1969 and rose through the academic ranks, becoming a full professor in pediatrics and neurology before being named the Lederer Professor of Pediatric Epilepsy in 1991. He became an emeritus professor in 2007.
Freeman received numerous awards, including the American Epilepsy Society's J. Kiffin Penry Award for Epilepsy Care in 2001 and its William G. Lennox Award in 2003; the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Epilepsy Foundation of America, and the Child Neurology Society's highest honor, the Hower Award, in 2004.
The Hower Award's citation praised Freeman's "characteristic unwillingness to accept even 'well-established management principles' without freshly and critically examining their basis." It described his four-decade career as one in which he "played the role of gadfly, critic and skeptic, the asker of well-formulated questions."
"John eventually acknowledged that he was a curmudgeon," says Vining. "But he didn't accept the classic definition of a crusty, ill-tempered old man. He thought of himself as willing to point out errors or hypocrisy with a sense of humor."
Freeman's "wonderful sense of humor" also was evident in his examinations of pediatric patients, which were "meant to be playful," Vining recalled.
"Just watching a child play—often with carefully chosen objects—might be all you needed to make a diagnosis. And John playing with the child, usually sitting on the floor, is an image I will always have of him. He needed to do it because he was so tall. He wanted to do it because it was fun. He taught generations of neurologists and pediatricians that you could perform a very thorough neuropsychological examination of a child with the coins in your pocket."
Freeman is survived by his wife of 57 years, Elaine Kaplan Freeman, Johns Hopkins Medicine's former vice president of corporate communications, who served as head of the public affairs and marketing office from 1982 to 2005; two sons, Andrew D. Freeman of Baltimore and Joshua L. Freeman of Chevy Chase, Md.; one daughter, Jennifer B. Freeman of New York City; and six grandchildren. Survivors also include his brother, Donald D. Freeman of Silver Spring, and a step-sister, Laura Lippman Sager of New York City.
Services will be held Monday, January 6, at 2 p.m. at Sol Levinson and Bros. Funeral Home, 8900 Reisterstown Rd. at Mt. Wilson Lane, Pikesville, MD, 21208. Contributions in memory of Dr. Freeman may be made to the Freeman Clinical Bioethics Fund at the Berman Bioethics Institute, Johns Hopkins University, 3400 N. Charles St., Baltimore, MD 21218, or to the John M. Freeman Leadership Endowment in the JHU Department of Neurology.


text:
It was one of those microseconds when you know exactly what is about to happen, without the slightest chance of stopping it.
The big black boy rode his bike straight at me, crashing me off my own and leaving us both tangled up on the ground. Then four more of them were racing towards me, clawing at my legs to get them off my bike, kicking me in the head as I tried to hold on. Two minutes later, it was all over. Ten minutes later, no doubt, it was being used to loot a newsagent's.
Bleeding a little, I thought I might as well call 999. It was a recorded message. After four and a half minutes, a tired man answered. "There's nothing we can do," he said. "You know what's going on. We have to give priority to saving people's lives. I suggest you just go home."
He was right, of course. I was in Hackney - which, that evening at least, was a law-free zone. That's the worst thing about riots. Across much of London on Monday night, if someone had decided to break down your door and rape your daughter, there would have been nothing to stop them. There would have been no one to call.
When I was mugged, I was on my way home from a day in Tottenham, listening to the stories of the people who had lost far more and been at far greater risk than me, burned out of their homes at 30 seconds' notice.
They called 999 too, frantically, desperately, as the riot moved closer. There were 100 police just up the road. The emergency operator could do nothing but listen to their terror.
I finished my journey in a cab. Three or four times, we had to stop and skirt round hooded boys spilling into the road, our windows closed and the door lock on. If they had fancied my taxi, there would have been nothing I or the driver could have done about that, either.
Even on Monday, the victims of Tottenham, black and white, were already tired of outsiders blaming racism, police brutality, or cuts. (What were they rioting about in prosperous, suburban Enfield – rising season-ticket prices?) The real reason for the rioters' behaviour is much simpler: because they can.
Forget BlackBerry Messenger. After seeing — on television — how much leeway the looters of Tottenham were allowed, every criminal and every excitement-seeking child in London took note.
By the next day, critical mass had been achieved. Disorder had erupted on a scale much more difficult to suppress than the original outbreak.
There are, and always have been, plenty of people keen to break the law. On my taxi ride, I saw many other youngsters in twos and threes, hoods up, looking for the next crowd to join.
These are sights, with variations, that I have seen in foreign conflict zones: the loss of state authority and the loss of individual inhibition from being in a big group. But in London, the geography of fear is particularly potent.
Unlike Los Angeles or Paris, the riots are not happening in ghettos where nobody goes. They are happening amid the organic gastropubs and latte bars. Alongside poverty, inner London is full of the sort of middle-class progressives who agree with Ken Livingstone that the rioters "feel no one at the top of society, in government or City Hall, cares about them or speaks for them".
I predict a lot of those people, as they cower behind their sash windows, are revising their views tonight. The hardening of liberal opinion in London is palpable, and is taking even the likes of Boris Johnson by surprise.
In my neighbourhood, Greenwich, they boarded up the shops at noon. God knows how much damage this is doing to the economy. It's a beautiful, sunny evening. But our area is empty, like so much of inner London, as we wait in our homes with the TVs on to discover if they will be coming for us tonight.


text:
According to a leak fresh out of Redmond, the company might looking to Qualcomm for its next-gen Surface RT, while AMD's Temash quad-core APU could replace Intel's Core i5 chips in the Surface Pro.
It doesn't end there. The next generation RT is said to feature a smaller 8.9-inch form factor, while the Pro could grow to 11.6 inches, just to differentiate them a bit more. It sounds plausible, but there is talk of an even larger device in the works, a 14.6-inch Surface Book, a hybrid ultrabook with a proper keyboard and trackpad.
Needless to say, these early leaks should be taken with a grain of salt, although at least some of them sound plausible and frankly we would like to see AMD score a significant design win for Tamesh. It would spice things up a bit.
More here.


text:
Your registered e-mail is Invalid. Please kindly correct it so that we can contact you successfully by e-mail in case there's any order problem needed your confirmation.
Modify the email address | No, my e-mail address is valid e-mail.
PandaHall Beads APP Free APP on Google Play
PandaHall Beads APP International Version Go Live
Ship to:
United States
Sign in My Account
Cart (0)
| More
Shipping Weight: 2,151 g
As Low As US $0.03/ pc
Shipping Weight: 68 g
As Low As US $0.12/ pc
Shipping fee Repacking Service
About PandaHall
Customer Service
Join us on:
Sign up for Email Offers
©2003-2024 Pandahall.com. All rights reserved.
Download PandaHall Beads APP
Below TO GET $40 OFF COUPON
iOS APP
Google Play
Sign In Register
We use cookies to provide you with a customized, responsive, and a personalized experience. If you continue to use our website, we will assume that you agree to our Privacy Policy.
Search by Image
·Search pandahall with an image instead of text. Try dragging an image here.
Uploading File
Share with


text:
Main Page
March 6-7, 2012
As the networked media environment increasingly permeates private and public life, driven in part by the rapid and extensive travels of news, information and commentary, our systems for identifying and responding to misinformation and propaganda are failing us, creating serious risk to everything from personal and financial health to fundamental democratic processes and governance. In this age when many would argue that news and information have become key ingredients of broad social progress, our supply is tainted. Concerns about misinformation and disinformation are nothing new. Indeed, many tried and true techniques for disseminating misinformation remain just as vibrant in our current communications and information era. But digital media present new challenges to existing institutions, structures and processes, jeopardizing its potential contributions to the health of political, economic, and social systems.
While opinions differ over how digital media ameliorates and exacerbates the spread and influence of misinformation, this multifaceted issue persists in the face of thoughtful, sustained, and creative responses—and demonstrates a great diversity of manifestations, roots, and harms. The motives for spreading misinformation are many. They may be partisan or commercial, may derive from or evoke moral and religious sensibilities, may offer political or social commentary, or may be merely whimsical. But what to do? Building upon recent convenings and a number of related projects, we are taking a critical step towards a deeper understanding of the problem with a keen eye towards collectively identifying novel solutions and concrete actions to combat the deleterious impacts of misinformation in the near term and over time.
This symposium will focus on exploring the many facets of this complex issue with an eye to crafting tools and strategies to ameliorate the negative impacts of deception, bias, and inaccuracy in the digital media ecosystem. We hope to come to a better position to take advantage of the benefits promised by digital media while appreciating the positive aspects of creative media-making and probing the blurred boundaries between nefarious and beneficial media shaping practices.
From academics to activists, techno geeks to policy geeks, and media scholars to media makers, participants will span a wide range of academic and professional backgrounds and expertise to promote cross-disciplinary learning and to facilitate the formation of novel and holistic approaches to these complex issues. The one-day public conference will include approximately 100 participants to balance inclusiveness with a participatory setting. It will draw upon a variety of formats to complement the topics, disciplinary approaches, and available participants, including selected presentations, case studies, tool demonstrations, and roundtable discussions. We hope to provide ample white space between sessions for people to process ideas, connect with one another, and generate new insights and approaches regarding the nature and complexity of the problem, relevant narratives and illustrative use cases, new areas of vulnerability and concern, and the relative merits of existing strategies to combat misinformation.
The final session on March 6, 2012 is intended to provide a bridge between the day's discussions and the Hack day, with a focus on interventions, tools, and useful strategies for a variety of users operating in today's digital communications environment. Hosted at the Media Lab, the Hack Day will provide for a series of working sessions, informed by the conference and designed to maximize focus and productivity. It will endeavor to conceive and prototype tools, processes and other resources to confront the challenges identified in the previous days.
We are delighted to have a diverse range of experts, scholars, commentators, practitioners, and users as participants and speakers in the Symposium. Our hope is to create a highly interactive environment that will encourage conversation, provocation, debate, and input from all participants throughout the day. We will provide numerous mechanisms for commentary, both in the lead up to and after the symposium, from our blog to the Hack Day on March 7, 2012. Moderators and session leads will also be looking to the crowd to deepen and enrich all sessions and approach these complex issues from multiple dimensions, disciplines, and perspectives.
- Please add links to papers, articles, blogposts, and other items related to internet misinformation and of interest to symposium participants to this page. Users need to create an account to edit this wiki -- click on the link in the top right corner of this page to obtain a username/password.
- Barlett, Jamie and Carl Miller truth, lies and the internet a report into young people's digital fluency
- Barlett, Jamie and Carl Miller the power of unreason
- Battles, Matthew. Distributed Ghosts in the Machine The Atlantic, March 28, 2011.
- Yochai Benkler. Seven Lessons from SOPA/PIPA/Megaupload and Four Proposals on Where We Go From Here TechPresident, January 25, 2012.
- DeSantis, Nick. New media consortium names 10 top 'metatrends' shaping educational technology The Chronicle of Higher Education, February 3, 2012.
- Diakopoulos, N., Goldenberg, S. and Essa, I., Videolyzer: Quality Analysis of Online Informational Video for Bloggers and Journalists. Proceedings of CHI, (2009). [1]
- Dobbs, Michael S The Rise of Political Fact-checking - How Reagan Inspired a Journalistic Movement: A Reporter's Eye View
- Dunbar, John. Super PACs out-raise candidates, thanks to super donors Consider the Source, iWatch News, Center for Public Integrity, February 21, 2012.
- Electronic Privacy Information Center. E-Deceptive Campaign Practices: Technology and Democracy 2.0 Report 2010 October 2010.
- Epelboin, Fabrice. Did the French Govt. Ask Twitter to Suspend Satirical Accounts? Read Write Web, February 19, 2012.
- Falcon, Ernesto. Who Really Engaged in Misinformation? Public Knowledge, February 9, 2012.
- Ferraro, Nicle. RIAA CEO Hopes SOPA Protests Were a 'One-Time Thing' Internet Evolution, February 29, 2012.
- Gasser, U., Cortesi, S., Malik, M., & Lee, A. (2012). Youth and digital media: From credibility to information quality. Berkman Center for Internet & Society. Retrieved March 5, 2012 from http://ssrn.com/abstract=2005272.
- Graves, Lucas and Tom Glaisyer. The Fact-Checking Universe in Spring 2012: An Overview
- Heinzelman, Jessica and Patrick Meier. "Crowdsourcing for Human Rights Monitoring: Challenges and Opportunities for Information Collection and Verification" in Lannon, J. and Halpin E.F. (2012) Human Rights and Information Communication Technologies: Trends and Consequences of Use. IGI Global.
- Howard, P. N., Agarwal, S. D., & Hussain, M. M. (2011). When Do States Disconnect Their Digital Networks? Regime Responses to the Political Uses of Social Media. The Communication Review, Twitter Revolutions? Addressing Social Media and Dissent, 14(3), 216-232.
- Howard, P. N., Agarwal, S. D., & Hussain, M. M. (2011). The Dictators' Digital Dilemma (No. 13). Issues in Technology and Innovation (pp. 1-11). Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution.
- Howard, P. N., Duffy, A., Freelon, D., Hussain, M. M., Mari, W., & Mazaid, M. (2011). Opening Closed Regimes: What was the role of social media during the Arab Spring? National Science Foundation-funded Information Technology and Political Islam project (pp. 1-30). Seattle, WA: Center for Communication and Civic Engagement.
- Howard, P. N., & Hussain, M. M. (2011). The Role of Digital Media. Journal of Democracy, The Upheavals in Egypt and Tunisia, 22(3), 35-48.
- Howard, P. N., Hussain, M. M., Freelon, D., Mari, W., & Duffy, A. (2011). Digital Media and Contagious Democracy: Lessons from the Arab Spring. Dallas, TX: Bush Institute for Human Freedom.
- Hussain, Muzammil M. Journalism's digital disconnect: The growth of campaign content and entertainment gatekeepers in viral political information Journalism, January 24, 2012.
- Indiana University Center for Complex Networks & Systems Research. The Truthy Project Truthy is a research project that helps you understand how memes spread online. We collect tweets from Twitter and analyze them. With our statistics, images, movies, and interactive data, you can explore these dynamic networks.
- Indiana University Center for Complex Networks & Systems Research. Information Diffusion in Online Social Networks The focus of this research project is understanding how information propagates through complex networks. Leveraging large-scale behavioral trace data from online social networking platforms we are able to analyze and model the spread of information, from political discourse to market trends, in unprecedented detail.
- Jacobs, Frank. The First Google Maps War The New York Times, February 28, 2012.
- Keller, Jared. When campaigners manipulate social media The Atlantic, November 10, 2010.
- Kleiner, Kurt. Bogus grass-roots politics on Twitter: Data-mining techniques reveal fake Twitter accounts that give the impression of a vast political movement Technology Review, November 2, 2010.
- Lakely, Jim. Heartland Institute Responds to Stolen and Fake Documents Heartland Institute, February 15, 2012.
- Lotan, Gilad Breaking Bin Laden: Visualizing the Power of a Single Tweet
- Lotan, Gilad Timing, Network, Topicality: a revealing look at how Whitney Houston's death news spread on Twitter
- Lotan, Graeff, Ananny, Gaffney, Pearce, and boyd (2011). "The Revolutions Were Tweeted: Information Flows during the 2011 Tunisian and Egyptian Revolutions." International Journal of Communications 5, Feature 1375-1405
- Meier, Patrick. Information Forensics: How to Verify Crowdsourced Information from Social Media iRevolution, November 29, 2011.
- Meier, Patrick. How To Use Technology To Counter Rumors During Crises iRevolution, March 26, 2011.
- Meier, Patrick. Wag the Dog, or How Falsifying Crowdsourced Data Can Be a Pain iRevolution, April 8, 2010.
- Meier, Patrick. Seeking the Trustworthy Tweet iRevolution, June 5, 2011.
- Meier, Patrick. Why Bounded Crowdsourcing is Important for Information Verification iRevolution, December 7, 2011.
- Meier, Patrick. Analyzing the Veracity of Tweets during a Major Crisis iRevolution, September 19, 2010.
- Meier, Patrick. Trails of Trustworthiness in Real-Time Streams iRevolution, March 3, 2012.
- Meier, Patrick. Crowdsourcing Honesty? iRevolution, January 2, 2009.
- Meier, Patrick. Crowdsourcing vs Vladimir Putin: Digital Sabotaging iRevolution, December 4, 2011.
- Meier, Patrick. The Crowdsourcing Detective: Crisis, Deception and Intrigue in the Twittersphere iRevolution, June 30, 2010.
- Meier, Patrick. How to Use Facebook if You Are a Repressive Regime iRevolution, February 10, 2011.
- Messer-Kruse, Timothy The 'Undue Weight' of Truth on Wikipedia The Chronicle of Higher Education, February 12, 2012.
- Metaxas, Panagiotis. Web spam, social propaganda and the evolution of search engine rankings Lecture Notes BIP, Springer-Verlag, 2010.
- Metaxas, Panagiotis and Eni Mustafaraj. From obscurity to prominence in prominence in minutes: political speech and real-time search Web Science 2010 Conference, Raleigh, NC, April 2010.
- Meyer, Pamela. How to spot a lie CNN.com, November 14, 2011.
- Moy, P., & Hussain, M. M. (2011). Media Influences on Political Trust and Engagement. In R. Y. Shapiro & L. R. Jacobs (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of American Public Opinion and the Media (pp. 220-235). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
- Mustafaraj, Eni; Samantha Finn, Carolyn Whitlock and Panagiotis Metaxas. Vocal minority versus silent majority: discovering the opinions of the long tail IEEE SocialCom Conference, Boston, MA, October, 2011.
- Mustafaraj, Eni and Panagiotis Metaxas. Trails of trustiworthiness in real-time streams Design, Influence and Social Technologies, ACM Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), Seattle, WA, February, 2012.
- Nahon, K., Helmsley, J., Hussain, M. M., & Walker, S. (2011). Viral Political Information in the US Elections Metabase, 2008 [Data Set]. Seattle, WA: Information and Society Center.
- Nahon, K., Hemsley, J., Walker, S., & Hussain, M. M. (2011). Fifteen Minutes of Fame: The Power of Blogs in the Lifecycle of Viral Political Information. Policy & Internet, 3(1).
- Newman, Melanie. PR firm 'attacked' critics of Rwandan government Bureau of Investigative Journalism, December 6, 2011.
- Newmark, Craig. Is this a real big step toward holding politicians accountable? Craigconnects.org, February 21, 2012.
- Nyhan, Brendan and Jason Reifler. Misinformation and Fact-checking Research Findings from Social Science
- Plait, Phil. Breaking news: A look behind the curtain of the Heartland Institute's climate change spin Discover Magazine, February 15, 2012.
- Rosen, Jay. NPR Tries to Get its Pressthink Right Press Think, February 26, 2012.
- Silverman, Craig. "Death Panels" Report Reaches Depressing Conclusions Columbia Journalism Review. May 27, 2011.
- Silverman, Craig. The Backfire Effect: More on the press's inability to debunk bad information Columbia Journalism Review. June 17, 2011.
- Silverman, Craig. Misinformation Propagation: Scientists work to combat false memes Columbia Journalism Review, November 4, 2011.
- Silverman, Craig. The Truth about Public Untruths: Are journalists and others equipped to beat back the lies? Columbia Journalism Review, December 2, 2011.
- Lai Stirland, Sarah. Google is latest weapon vs. GOP Politico, October 18, 2010.
- Steele, Robert. Robert Steele: Itemization of Information Pathologies Phi Beta Iota Public Intelligence Blog, 3 March 2012
- Steele, Robert. PREPRINT FOR COMMENT: The Craft of IntelligencePhi Beta Iota Public Intelligence Blog, 17 February 2012
- Steele, Robert. THE OPEN SOURCE EVERYTHING MANIFESTO: Transparency, Truth & Trust (Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books / Evolver Editions, 5 June 2012
- Sullivan, Andrew. Wikipedia is not Truth The Daily Dish, February 20, 2012.
- York, Geoffrey. How a U.S. agency cleaned up Rwanda's genocide-stained image Globe and Mail, January 31, 2012.
- Food for Thought dinners are self-organized gatherings that allow conference attendees to engage in informal, themed conversation with other conference participants, and will take place on Tuesday, March 6th after the cocktail reception. Please note that attendees will pay their own dinner costs.
- If you would like to propose / organize a food for thought dinner:
- Please add the proposal in the one of the slots below, with your name and contact information
- Attendance is limited to eight people per dinner, including the organizer
- Choose a restaurant and make a reservation by 3:00pm on Tuesday, March 6th
- We'll be reserving tables at the following restaurants:
- If you would like to join one of the dinners:
- Add your name to one of the slots below by 3:00pm on Tuesday, March 6th
- If you decide not to attend a dinner to which you are signed up, please delete yourself from the list.
- For restaurants in Harvard Square, expect approximately a 10 minute walk from HLS campus. For restaurants in Porter Square, expect approximately a 15 minute walk.
In Vino, Veritas...?
- 7:30pm, The Restaurant Chang-Sho, 1712 Massachusetts Ave
- Daniel Jones
- Rebekah Heacock
- Becca Tabasky
- Jim Fingal
- Muzammil Hussain
- Michael Conover
- Insert name
- Insert name
Josh Benton/Craig Silverman, What does a good online debunking page look like?
- 7:30, Tamarind Bay, 75 Winthrop St
- Josh Benton
- Craig Silverman
- Aaron Naparstek
- Austen Levihn-Coon
- Insert name
- Insert name
- Insert name
- Insert name
Tractable Tools and Experiments
- 7:30pm Grafton Street: 1230 Massachusetts Ave
- Nick Diakopoulos
- Paul Resnick
- Sidharth Chhabra
- Holly Teresi
- J. Nathan Matias (@natematias)
- Elena Agapie
- We welcome you to submit a blogpost for our conference website before, during and after the event. If you're interested in submitting a blogpost, please contact Berkman staff members Amar Ashar (ashar at cyber.law.harvard.edu) or Kori Urayama (kurayama at cyber.law.harvard.edu ).
- Blogposts should ideally:
- Be 250-1,000 words in length
- Can cover any issues, phenomena, visions, or questions that you think may be helpful in understanding a host of topics that will (or should) be dealt with at the conference;
- Could include interesting examples of tools of misinformation, historical or new-media focused case studies, or focus on a specific mode, process or method—something that you are excited about;
- Be new and original, but cross-postings are welcome/encouraged.


text:
Chattanooga Romantic Getaway Vacation Packages including every thing from Mattress and Breakfasts to luxury accommodations. Prices displayed are for cash payments in store and extra fees might apply to online bookings. R/T Airfare, Ambassador Hotel Waikiki in Honolulu is a beachside smoke-free hotel providing plush residential-grade poolside rooms. Cozy up to a winter wonderland with low cost Whistler trip packages. Strive a metropolis-centric trip to the east coast, or discover solar-soaked destinations out west.
Select a station you are travelling from Select a station you're travelling to Select a legitimate departure date Choose a valid returning date Inform us the age(s) of children travelling Tell us the age(s) of youth travelling Tell us the age(s) of seniors travelling Choose a unique vacation spot station from origin station Enter between 1 and 0 travellers for this trip At present this route just isn't supported.
The Casela Nature Park gives a plethora … Read the rest


text:
All registered paid participants are automatically eligible to win a weekly prize and entered into the Grand Prize drawing at the end of the 100 days! To claim your prize, you must provide a completed and signed miles tracking form to the Parks & Rec office at Fairgrounds Park on 351 N. Cleveland Ave. Hagerstown, MD 21740
Show All Answers
The program begins on Friday, January 13, 2023. The programs runs for 100 days, concluding on Saturday, April 22. Late Registration through January 31.
There are lots of physical activities that get your body moving. 20 minutes of continuous physical activity (like a Yoga class, skiing, golf) counts as one mile, or simply walk or run a mile, it all counts! Get creative and remember, it's all about having fun while making a lifestyle change! Email us any questions on making your miles count at: firstname.lastname@example.com
All registered paid participants are automatically eligible to win weekly prizes and entered into the Grand Prize drawing(s) at the finale. Weekly prize winners will be randomly drawn each Thursday, and winners announced via our website! If you do the math, that's the chance to win one of 14 weekly prizes like a personal fitness session, golf or swim passes, and gift certificates. We will send you weekly emails to keep you motivated with ideas on how to get your miles in! You get your own parks & rec 'virtual coach' as part of the program.
$10 without t-shirt; $20 with t-shirt.$25 for a long sleeve t-shirt. Register with your dog and get a t-shirt and a doggie bandana for $25.


text:
A pony found in Dartmoor, England, in July apparently died under mysterious and horrific circumstances: It had been mutilated, and several of its organs were missing, which fueled speculation that it was killed in some sort of satanic or pagan ritual sacrifice.
The 2-month-old male pony apparently had its genitals, eyes, tongue and one ear removed. The death seemed very sinister and mysterious, leading Dartmoor's livestock-protection officer to speculate that " witches or devil worshippers" were responsible. This theory, in turn, sparked fears about the people who would kill and dismember a young pony.
Now, the mystery has been solved. [ Witches & Wiccans: 6 Common Misconceptions ]
Devon and Cornwall police concluded earlier this week that the pony had died of natural causes. The much-discussed "mutilation" was not, in fact, mutilation at all, but instead the normal result of wild animals eating the pony's organs and scattering its entrails.
"Initial media reports linked the death of the pony to satanic cults and ritualistic killing," the police said in a statement. "The police have sought the advice of experts and have come to the view that the death of this pony was through natural causes. All the injuries can be attributed to those caused by other wild animals. This incident received significant media reporting, some of which was clearly sensationalist."
Mysterious predation?
But if the pony died of natural causes, what about the claims and rumors of satanic or pagan sacrifices? How did those come about?
Part of the answer, as the police noted, is surely that the animal-sacrifice angle made the story sensational and interesting. As long as people (especially officials) are willing to publicly speculate about whether there are groups of evil people lurking in their community looking for a chance to kill and ritually sacrifice animals — especially ones as cute and beloved as ponies — there's little wonder why the media ran with it.
The larger question is, why didn't locals and the livestock-protection officer recognize the signs of ordinary predation? After all, presumably dead animals are not uncommon on farms and ranches; surely, a livestock official would be able to tell the difference between an animal that died of natural causes and was set upon by scavengers, and an animal carefully killed in some sort of ritual sacrifice, right? [ Spooky! Top 10 Unexplained Phenomena ]
Not necessarily, for several reasons. One problem is that most ranchers and livestock officials have no idea what occurs in a real animal ritual sacrifice, so they can hardly make a valid comparison. Though animal sacrifice has been a part of many religions (including Christianity, Judaism and Islam), these days, the practice is mostly limited to Afro-Caribbean religions such as Santería, which has very specific procedures and rituals for the sacrifice (and typically sacrifice chickens or goats, not horses). In fact, the butchered remains of a goat and two roosters found in Miami's South Beach this year were thought by some to be a Santería ritual sacrifice.
Of course, with something as mysterious and clandestine as suspected satanists, anything could be assumed to be the result of their sinister actions.
Forensic analysis
Since no one was around when the pony died, it's impossible to know what, exactly, killed it; suspects include wild animals, disease or even lightning. The fact is, scavenger animals eat soft tissues of the body first, including the parts missing from the pony: the genitals, eyes, tongue and ears. Since the pony had been dead for several days before its body was found, there was plenty of time for birds, maggots, blowflies and other carrion-eating animals to scavenge on, or even carry off, these "mysteriously" missing body parts.
Dale A. Wade, an extension wildlife specialist with the Texas A&M University Research and Extension Center in San Angelo, Texas, is co-author of "Procedures for Evaluating Predation on Livestock and Wildlife" (AgriLIFE Extension, Texas A & M System, 2010). In his book, Wade points out thatranchers, and even livestock experts, may not recognize what killed an animal, since it is often difficult or impossible to determine the cause of death simply by looking at, or even by handling, a dead animal.
Instead, to determine what killed the animal, the person studying the body should "examine carcasses for wounds, hemorrhage, bruises, broken bones and feeding. If necessary, the entire carcass should be skinned and opened to identify internal wounds and other factors, which help confirm the cause of death. For example, some animals are killed by a single grip at the throat, which causes suffocation but leaves little external evidence. … Knowledge and skill are often necessary to determine the cause of injuries or death."
None of these examinations was done at the time. The misidentification of normal animal predation is a common element in "mysterious" animal deaths, such as cattle mutilations and even suspected attacks by chupacabra, a legendary blood-sucking creature often blamed for weird livestock deaths. At its heart, this is an example of a logical fallacy called "argument from ignorance" (drawing a conclusion from a lack of evidence).
In other words, just because the pony's cause of death was unknown doesn't logically mean the animal was sacrificed by satanists, witches or anyone else; it simply means the cause of death was unknown. Though the case resulted in some red faces, the best news that can be drawn from the incident is that the pony died naturally, and was not the victim of foul play.
Benjamin Radford is deputy editor of "Skeptical Inquirer" science magazine and author of six books, including "Scientific Paranormal Investigation: How to Solve Unexplained Mysteries" and "Hoaxes, Myths, and Manias: Why We Need Critical Thinking." His website is BenjaminRadford.com.
Follow LiveScience, &. Original article on .


text:
The First Lay of Guthrun, entitled in the Codex Regius simply Guthrunarkvitha, immediately follows the remaining fragment of the "long" Sigurth lay in that manuscript. Unlike the poems dealing with the earlier part of the Sigurth cycle, the so-called Reginsmol, Fafnismol, and Sigrdrifumol, it is a clear and distinct unit, apparently complete and with few and minor interpolations. It is also one of the finest poems in the entire collection, with an extraordinary emotional intensity and dramatic force. None of its stanzas are quoted elsewhere, and it is altogether probable that the compilers of the Volsungasaga were unfamiliar with it, for they do not mention the sister and daughter of Gjuki who appear in this poem, or Herborg, "queen of the Huns" (stanza 6).
The lament of Guthrun (Kriemhild) is almost certainly among the oldest parts of the story. The lament was one of the earliest forms of poetry to develop among the Germanic peoples, and I suspect, though the matter is not susceptible of proof, that the lament of Sigurth's wife had assumed lyric form as early as the seventh century, and reached the North in that shape rather than in prose tradition (cf. Guthrunarkvitha II, introductory note). We find traces of it in the seventeenth Aventiure of the Nibelungenlied, and in the poems of the Edda it dominates every appearance of Guthrun. The two first Guthrun lays (I and II) are both laments, one for Sigurth's death and the other including both that and the lament over the slaying of her brothers; the lament theme is apparent in the third Guthrun lay and in the Guthrunarhvot.
In their present forms the second Guthrun lay is undoubtedly older than he first; in the prose following the Brot the annotator refers to the "old" Guthrun lay in terms which can apply only to the second one in the collection. The shorter and "first" lay, therefore, can scarcely have been composed much before the year 1000, and may be somewhat later. The poet appears to have known and made use of the older lament; stanza 17, for example, is a close parallel to stanza 2 of the earlier poem; but whatever material he used he fitted into a definite poetic scheme of his
{p. 412}
own. And while this particular poem is, as critics have generally agreed, one of the latest of the collection, it probably represents one of the earliest parts of the entire Sigurth cycle to take on verse form.
Guthrunarkvitha I, so far as the narrative underlying it is concerned, shows very little northern addition to the basic German tradition. Brynhild appears only as Guthrun's enemy and the cause of Sigurth's death; the three women who attempt to comfort Guthrun, though unknown to the southern stories, seem to have been rather distinct creations of the poet's than traditional additions to the legend. Regarding the relations of the various elements in the Sigurth cycle, cf. introductory note to Gripisspo.
Guthrun sat by the dead Sigurth; she did not weep as other women, but her heart was near to bursting with grief. The men and women came to her to console her, but that was not easy to do. It is told of men that Guthrun had eaten of Fafnir's heart, and that she under stood the speech of birds. This is a poem about Guthrun.
1. Then did Guthrun | think to die,
When she by Sigurth | sorrowing sat;
Tears she had not, | nor wrung her hands,
Nor ever wailed, | as other women.
[Prose. The prose follows the concluding prose of the Brot without indication of a break, the heading standing immediately before stanza 1. Fafnir's heart: this bit of information is here quite without point, and it is nowhere else stated that Guthrun understood the speech of birds. In the Volsungasaga it is stated that Sigurth gave Guthrun some of Fafnir's heart to eat, "and thereafter she was much grimmer than before, and wiser."
1. This stanza seems to be based on Guthrunarkvitha II, 11-12.]
{p. 413}
2. To her the warriors | wise there came,
Longing her heavy | woe to lighten;
Grieving could not | Guthrun weep,
So sad her heart, | it seemed, would break.
3. Then the wives | of the warriors came,
Gold-adorned, | and Guthrun sought;
Each one then | of her own grief spoke,
The bitterest pain | she had ever borne.
4. Then spake Gjaflaug, | Gjuki's sister:
"Most joyless of all | on earth am I;
Husbands five | were from me taken,
(Two daughters then, | and sisters three,)
Brothers eight, | yet I have lived."
5. Grieving could not | Guthrun weep,
Such grief she had | for her husband dead,
And so grim her heart | by the hero's body.
6. Then Herborg spake, | the queen of the Huns:
[4. Gjaflaug: nothing further is known of this aunt of Guthrun, or of the many relatives whom she has lost. Very likely she is an invention of the poet's, for it seems improbable that other wise all further trace of her should have been lost. Line 4 has been marked by many editors as spurious.
5. Some editors assume the loss of a line, after either line 1 or line 3. I prefer to believe that here and in stanza 10 the poet knew exactly what he was doing, and that both stanzas are correct.
6. Herborg: neither she nor her sorrows are elsewhere mentioned, {footnote p. 415} nor is it clear what a "queen of the Huns" is doing in Gunnar's home, but the word "Hun" has little definiteness of meaning in the poems, and is frequently applied to Sigurth himself (cf. note on stanza 24). Herborg appears from stanza 11 to have been the foster-mother of Gollrond, Guthrun's sister. Lines 5-7 may be interpolations, or may form a separate stanza.]
{p. 414}
"I have a greater | grief to tell;
My seven sons | in the southern land,
And my husband, fell | in fight all eight.
(Father and mother | and brothers four
Amid the waves | the wind once smote,
And the seas crashed through | the sides of the ship.)
7. "The bodies all | with my own hands then
I decked for the grave, | and the dead I buried;
A half-year brought me | this to bear;
And no one came | to comfort me.
8. "Then bound I was, | and taken in war,
A sorrow yet | in the same half-year;
They bade me deck | and bind the shoes
Of the wife of the monarch | every morn.
9. "In jealous rage | her wrath she spake,
And beat me oft | with heavy blows;
[7. Lines 1 and 2 stand in reversed order in the manuscript; I have followed Gering's conjectural transposition.
9. Herborg implies that the queen's jealousy was not altogether misplaced.]
{p. 415}
Never a better | lord I knew,
And never a woman | worse I found."
10. Grieving could not | Guthrun weep,
Such grief she had | for her husband dead,
And so grim her heart | by the hero's body.
11. Then spake Gollrond, | Gjuki's daughter:
"Thy wisdom finds not, | my foster-mother,
The way to comfort | the wife so young."
She bade them uncover | the warrior's corpse.
12. The shroud she lifted | from Sigurth, laying
His well-loved head | on the knees of his wife:
"Look on thy loved one, | and lay thy lips
To his as if yet | the hero lived."
13. Once alone did | Guthrun look;
His hair all clotted | with blood beheld,
The blinded eyes | that once shone bright,
The hero's breast | that the blade had pierced.
14. Then Guthrun bent, | on her pillow bowed,
[10. Cf. stanza 5 and note. The manuscript abbreviates to first letters.
11. Gollrond: not elsewhere mentioned. Line 4 looks like an interpolation replacing a line previously lost.
12. The manuscript indicates line 3 as the beginning of a stanza. and some editors have attempted to follow this arrangement. Many editors assume the loss of a line from this stanza.]
{p. 416}
Her hair was loosened, | her cheek was hot,
And the tears like raindrops | downward ran.
15. Then Guthrun, daughter | of Gjuki, wept,
And through her tresses | flowed the tears;
And from the court | came the cry of geese,
The birds so fair | of the hero's bride.
16. Then Gollrond spake, | the daughter of Gjuki:
"Never a greater | love I knew
Than yours among | all men on earth;
Nowhere wast happy, | at home or abroad,
Sister mine, | with Sigurth away."
Guthrun spake:
17. "So was my Sigurth | o'er Gjuki's sons
As the spear-leek grown | above the grass,
Or the jewel bright | borne on the band,
The precious stone | that princes wear.
18. "To the leader of men | I loftier seemed
And higher than all | of Herjan's maids;
[15. The word here translated "tresses" is sheer guesswork. The detail of the geese is taken from Sigurtharkvitha en skamma, 29, line 3 here being identical with line 4 of that stanza.
16. Line 1, abbreviated in the manuscript, very likely should be simply "Gollrond spake."
17. Cf. Guthrunarkvitha II, 2. The manuscript does not name the speaker, and some editions have a first line, "Then Guthrun spake, the daughter of Gjuki."
18. Herjan: Othin; his maids are the Valkyries; cf. Voluspo, 31, where the same phrase is used.]
{p. 417}
As little now | as the leaf I am
On the willow hanging; | my hero is dead.
19. "In his seat, in his bed, | I see no more
My heart's true friend; | the fault is theirs,
The sons of Gjuki, | for all my grief,
That so their sister | sorely weeps.
20. "So shall your land | its people lose
As ye have kept | your oaths of yore;
Gunnar, no joy | the gold shall give thee,
(The rings shall soon | thy slayers be,)
Who swarest oaths | with Sigurth once.
21. "In the court was greater | gladness then
The day my Sigurth | Grani saddled,
And went forth Brynhild's | hand to win,
That woman ill, | in an evil hour."
22. Then Brynhild spake, | the daughter of Buthli:
"May the witch now husband | and children want
Who, Guthrun, loosed | thy tears at last,
And with magic today | hath made thee speak."
[20. Line 4 looks like an interpolation (cf. Fafnismol, 9, line 4), but some editors instead have queried line 5. How Guthrun's curse is fulfilled is told in the subsequent poems. That desire for Sigurth's treasure (the gold cursed by Andvari and Loki) was one of the motives for his murder is indicated in Sigurtharkvitha en skamma (stanza 16), and was clearly a part of the German tradition, as it appears in the Nibelungenlied.
21. Cf. Gripisspo, 35 and note.
22. Line 1 is abbreviated in the manuscript.]
{p. 418}
23. Then Gollrond, daughter | of Gjuki, spake:
"Speak not such words, | thou hated woman;
Bane of the noble | thou e'er hast been,
(Borne thou art | on an evil wave,
Sorrow hast brought | to seven kings,)
And many a woman | hast loveless made."
24. Then Brynhild, daughter | of Buthli, spake:
"Atli is guilty | of all the sorrow,
(Son of Buthli | and brother of mine,)
When we saw in the hall | of the Hunnish race
The flame of the snake's bed | flash round the hero;
(For the journey since | full sore have I paid,
And ever I seek | the sight to forget.)"
[23. Editors are agreed that this stanza shows interpolations, but differ as to the lines to reject. Line 4 (literally "every wave of ill-doing drives thee") is substantially a proverb, and line 5, with its apparently meaningless reference to "seven" kings, may easily have come from some other source.
24. The stanza is obviously in bad shape; perhaps it represents two separate stanzas, or perhaps three of the lines are later additions. Atli: Brynhild here blames her brother, following the frequent custom of transferring the responsibility for a murder (cf. Helgakvitha Hundingsbana II, 33), because he compelled her to marry Gunnar against her will, an idea which the poet seems to have gained from Sigurtharkvitha en skamma, 32-39. These stanzas represent an entirely different version of the story, wherein Atli, attacked by Gunnar and Sigurth, buys them off by giving Gunnar his sister, Brynhild, as wife. He seems to have induced the latter to marry Gunnar by falsely telling her that Gunnar was Sigurth (a rationalistic explanation of the interchange of forms described in the Volsungasaga and Gripisspo, 37-39). In the present stanza Atli is made to do this out of desire for Sigurth's treasure. Hunnish race: this may be {footnote p. 419} merely an error (neither Gunnar nor Sigurth could properly have been connected in any way with Atli and his Huns), based on Sigurtharkvitha en skamma, wherein Sigurth appears more than once as the "Hunnish king." The North was very much in the dark as to the differences between Germans, Burgundians, Franks, Goths, and Huns, and used the words without much discrimination. On the other hand, it may refer to Sigurth's appearance when, adorned with gold, he came with Gunnar to besiege Atli, in the alternative version of the story just cited (cf. Sigurtharkvitha en skamma, 36). Flame of the snake's bed: gold, so called because serpents and dragons were the' traditional guardians of treasure, on which they lay.]
{p. 419}
25. By the pillars she stood, | and gathered her strength,
From the eyes of Brynhild, | Buthli's daughter,
Fire there burned, | and venom she breathed,
When the wounds she saw | on Sigurth then.
Guthrun went thence away to a forest in the waste, and journeyed all the way to Denmark, and was there seven half-years with Thora, daughter of Hokon. Brynhild would not live after Sigurth. She had eight of her thralls slain and five serving-women. Then she killed her self with a sword, as is told in the Short Lay of Sigurth.
[Prose. The manuscript has "Gunnar" in place of "Guthrun," but this is an obvious mistake; the entire prose passage is based on Guthrunarkvitha II, 14. The Volsungasaga likewise merely paraphrases Guthrunarkvitha II, and nothing further is known of Thora or her father, Hokon, though many inconclusive attempts have been made to identify the latter. Brynhild: the story of her death is told in great detail in the latter part of Sigurtharkvitha en skamma.]
{p. 420}


text:
WINDSOR, Mass. (AP) — A proposal to build a new pipeline carrying natural gas is stirring criticism in Massachusetts, where more than a dozen towns near the potential path of the 250-mile line have passed resolutions against the project.
The plan, which calls for expanding a pipeline system that already stretches from the Gulf of Mexico to the Northeast, stems in part from a push by the six New England governors to boost the region's supply of natural gas.
A section of the Tennessee Gas Pipeline already enters the state at the New York line and runs along the edge of southern Massachusetts. The proposal by pipeline operator Kinder Morgan Energy Services of Texas calls for a new section to be built along the northern part of the state, ending in Dracut, north of Boston, where it would connect with a network of transmission lines owned by other companies.
Opponents have raised concerns about potential risks to the environment, including state forests and wildlife management areas, as well as the effects of the hydraulic-fracturing, or fracking, used elsewhere to extract gas by injecting high-pressure mixtures of water, sand or gravel and chemicals.
On May 19, the Berkshire Hills town of Windsor became the 14th municipality in the state to vote against pipeline-related projects after surveyors requested access to residents' properties as part of the siting process.
Most of the votes were nonbinding resolutions approved by residents, although the City Council in Northampton approved an anti-pipeline measure on May 15. Deerfield officials passed a resolution on April 28 denying access to town-owned land for project surveyors.
"We've got to be the squeaky wheel," said Janet Bradley, a retired high school environmental science teacher in Windsor, who said she is concerned about the possibility of accidental releases of gas or chemicals used in the fracking process. She said the municipal votes likely won't do much to stop the project — jurisdiction lies with the federal government — but she hopes they send a message to officials and utility executives.
A spokesman for Kinder Morgan, Richard Wheatley, said planners attempt to be as environmentally friendly as possible when routing the pipeline. About 37 percent of Massachusetts property owners contacted for land surveys have given their permission, according to Kinder Morgan.
The opponents include comedian Bill Cosby and his wife, Camille, who own hundreds of acres protected by the Franklin Land Trust in Shelburne Falls. The couple, who began buying land in the area in the 1970s, denied a request to survey for the pipeline on their land. Their agent, David Brokaw, said they are concerned about toxic waste and potential damage to wetlands.
The multibillion-dollar project would require public hearings and approval by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. The proposal came about after the six New England governors asked last year for grid operator ISO-New England to consider strategies to deliver more electricity, especially during peak usage periods.
Massachusetts relies heavily on natural gas. A report issued by the New England Gas-Electric Focus Group in March, in which ISO participated, said more than 50 percent of New England's electricity needs are now generated with natural gas, compared with 15 percent in 2000. In Massachusetts, only about 9.3 percent of net electricity generation comes from renewable sources, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Pipeline opponents say the state should instead focus on efficiency programs and developing renewable energy sources.


text:
NASA HD Moon Map Reveals Lunar North Pole Like Never Before (Photo)
A new high-resolution map of the moon's north pole shows a view of the surface that even the Apollo astronauts would envy.
The new lunar mosaic — which was captured by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) — resolves features as small as 6.5 feet (2 meters), providing information that could be used for landing-site scouting or to answer various questions about the surface of the moon, agency officials said.
With scientists and the public able to click, zoom in and move around the map, it's the first time an interactive mosaic has been released of the moon's north pole. [See the new moon map and more lunar photos from LRO]
"Creation of this giant mosaic took four years and a huge team effort across the LRO project," Mark Robinson, principal investigator for the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera, said in a statement.
"We now have a nearly uniform map to unravel key science questions and find the best landing spots for future exploration," added Robinson, who is based at Arizona State University in Tempe.
The mosaic is made up of 10,581 pictures carefully selected to provide consistent lighting across the surface. The map, which is hundreds of billions of pixels in size, gives a high-definition view of craters, divots and shadows across an area more than one-quarter that of the United States.
If you were to print out the map at the standard for print publications (300 dots per inch), it would be almost the same size as a U.S. football field, NASA officials said.
Images were obtained by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera, supplemented with data from LRO's Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter instrument. Map creators also used data from NASA's Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission.
GRAIL's twin spacecraft (called Ebb and Flow) made the highest-resolution gravity map ever of the moon before smashing as planned into a lunar mountain in December 2012.
NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has been circling the moon since June 2009, using seven instruments to examine the lunar surface and its radiation. Among the probe's notable achievements is finding extensive evidence of water iceon the moon's surface.
The new mosaic is available at http://lroc.sese.asu.edu/gigapan/.
Follow Elizabeth Howell @howellspace, or Space.com @Spacedotcom. We're also on Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.
Sign up for the Live Science daily newsletter now
Get the world's most fascinating discoveries delivered straight to your inbox.
Most Popular
By Robert Lea
By Ben Turner
By Sascha Pare


text:
Cold Chain Packaging market is likely to witness a stable growth rate over the forecast period driven by growing demand from emerging markets. Increasing family disposable incomes coupled with strengthening buyer power will support the Cold Chain Packaging market growth between 2020 and 2026.
Considering the rapidly changing market landscape, companies are changing their perspectives on expanding beyond traditional markets. In addition to focusing on widening applications, introducing new product portfolios, most food and beverage companies are planning to capture domestic and international markets.
Challenges related to distribution channels, intense competition, pricing issues and shifting consumer preferences will continue to put pressure on vendors' profit margins.
Report Description-
Next wave of growth opportunities in Cold Chain Packaging market between 2020 and 2026
The '2020 Global Cold Chain Packaging Market, Size, Share, Outlook and Growth Opportunities'
is a comprehensive work on the Cold Chain Packaging markets, companies, types, applications, and end-user verticals.
The research study analyzes the Cold Chain Packaging at global, regional and country levels with analysis of different types of Cold Chain Packaging being included in the research. Product diversification, widening scope of applications and investments in expanding into new markets are observed as the main strategies of Cold Chain Packaging companies in the recent past.
Accordingly, this report is structured to analyze and forecast the market size of Cold Chain Packaging across various types, applications, and industries. Short term and long term trends affecting the market landscape are included. Further, market drivers, restraints and potential opportunities are also provided in the report.
The Cold Chain Packaging report computes the 2020 market value in revenue terms based on the average Cold Chain Packaging prices. The study forecasts the market size to 2026 for different types of Cold Chain Packaging and compares growth rates across markets.
The research study discusses emerging strategies of Cold Chain Packaging vendors in the near to medium-term future. Leading five companies in the fructose industry together with their products, SWOT Analysis and comparison are provided.
The global Cold Chain Packaging market size is categorized into different types, applications, and geographies. At each of the region level, the Cold Chain Packaging market share across types and applications is provided. The five geographies covered in the report include North America, Asia Pacific, Europe, Middle East Africa, South and Central America. Further, country-level Cold Chain Packaging market value is also provided.
Latest Cold Chain Packaging news and deals including mergers, acquisitions, contract awards, licenses, product launches, and expansion plans are included in the report.
? Base Year- 2019; Forecast period: 2020- 2026
? Publication frequency- Every six months
? Research Methodology- Both top-down and Bottom-up approach are used for market size
? Additional support- Customization options, print authentication extended
Scope of the Report
? Global Cold Chain Packaging industry size outlook, 2020- 2026
? Market trends, drivers, restraints, and opportunities
? Porter's Five forces analysis
? Types of Cold Chain Packaging, 2020-2026
? Cold Chain Packaging applications and end-user verticals market size, 2020- 2026
? Cold Chain Packaging market size across countries, 2020- 2026
? 5 leading companies in the industry- overview, SWOT, financials, and products
? Latest market news and developments


text:
Chinatowns and Other Asian-American Enclaves
by David Johnson
Guide to Asian-American EnclavesIn the mid-1800s, many Chinese were prevented from working in mines or factories, or faced hostility from other workers fearing competition. Related Links |
As immigrants from Asia or the Pacific Islands arrived in the United States, they often joined their compatriots in already established ethnic communities where common language and culture made them feel at home. The result has been the creation of enclaves in the pattern of Chinatowns, the oldest such communities.
Frequently seen as exotic by outsiders, ethnic communities often became tourist attractions, offering food and products unavailable elsewhere. Tourism generated jobs while familiarizing other Americans with the immigrants' culture.
The Chinese, Japanese, and Filipinos were the first Asians to arrive in the United States in large numbers. The Korean and Vietnam wars, the 1965 Immigration Act, and the desire for more highly skilled workers all prompted more immigration from other Asian countries.
Today, Chinese are the largest Asian group in the United States, followed by Filipinos, Japanese, Indians, Koreans, and Vietnamese.
According to the 2010 census, there are 17.3 million Americans of Asian ancestry, or 5.6% of the population. California has the largest Asian population, nearly 5.6 million people, or 13%, with an additional .4% of Hawaiian or Pacific Islander heritage.
Hawaii is the only state where Asians (38.6%) and Pacific Islanders (10%) equal nearly 50% of the population.
New York State is second, with 1.4 million Asians representing 7.3% of the total population. Other states with large Asian populations are Texas, 1 million, or 3.8%; New Jersey, 665,100, or 8.3%; Illinois, 602,700, or 5%; Washington State, 614,600, or 9%.
The Chinese were the first Asians to arrive in the United States in large numbers, with thousands migrating to California during the gold rush of the 1850s.
At first most Chinese lived in rural areas where they worked in mines or on farms.
San Francisco's Chinatown
By the 1850s, a Chinese neighborhood had sprung up in San Francisco's Portsmouth Square, with a formal organization soon following. By 1854 the Chinese Benevolent Association, also known as the Six Companies, had been formed to help immigrants coming from their six respective provinces in China. Several years later, a Buddhist shrine, the Kong Chow Temple, was built in Chinatown.
By the end of the 1800s, two-thirds of the Chinese in California lived in cities, and nearly half lived in San Francisco.
Earthquake Forces Change
In 1900 a Chinese hospital opened in San Francisco's Chinatown.
After the 1906 San Francisco earthquake destroyed much of the neighborhood, Chinatown was rebuilt with some Chinese architecture in an effort to make it a tourist attraction. A Chinese YMCA and a branch of the public library soon followed, indicating widespread recognition that San Francisco's Chinatown was an established community.
Today, the largest Chinatown is in San Francisco, home to more than 14,000 people. A major tourist attraction, Chinatown has become a symbol of San Francisco.
New York
In 1858 a tiny Chinese community was recorded in New York City around Mott Street. As anti-Chinese sentiment rose in the West, many Chinese moved to Eastern cities. New York City's Chinatown grew from fewer than 50 people in 1870 to more than 3,000 in 1890.
Smaller Chinatowns developed in Boston, Chicago, and other large cities.
Some smaller cities, including Monterey Park, California, known as "Little Taipei," are also home to many Chinese.
Some Chinatowns, such as those in Locke and Walnut Grove, California, and in various mining towns, are now largely memories, as people dispersed over the years.
Chinese Open Laundries
In the mid-1800s, many Chinese were prevented from working in mines or factories, or faced hostility from other workers fearing competition.
As a result many Chinese turned to other occupations. In mining towns where were few women to cook or clean many Chinese men worked as domestic servants or opened laundries, tailor shops, and restaurants.
By 1900 most large American towns had a Chinese laundry, which employed 75% of all Chinese men. Laundries required minimal English and little money to open. Along with restaurants, the laundry business has remained popular with Chinese immigrants.


text:
Create a Website Account - Manage notification subscriptions, save form progress and more.
The Treasurer's Office accepts payments for state income taxes that are made subsequent to filing. Payments made at the time of filing may be submitted to the Commissioner of Revenue's Office attached to the tax return. The deadline for filing and payment of state income taxes is May 1st. If you need assistance in filing your state income tax return, the Commissioner of Revenue's Office provides help at no charge.
The Treasurer's Office collects on unpaid state income tax for the current tax year. Taxes that remain unpaid after the deadline of May 1st are subject to a 6% penalty to be applied each month or part month up to a maximum of 30% on the unpaid balance, plus any accrued interest. Penalty and interest rates are established by the VA Dept. of Taxation.
Income taxes for the current year that remain uncollected as of December 31st are turned over to the state and further collections actions are taken by the state. If you have questions regarding prior year income tax collection, you may contact the Virginia Department of Taxation at 804-367-8081 or online.


text:
Unmanned systems have begun to have a significant impact on warfare. Unmanned drones providing sustained surveillance, swift precise attacks on high value targets and small robots are being used for counter-IED missions. These systems are generally remotely piloted systems and are reliant upon near-continuous control by a human operator and vulnerable to breakdowns of communication links.
The future for unmanned systems lies in the development of highly capable systems that have a set of intelligence-based capabilities sufficient to enable the teaming of autonomous systems with Soldiers. To act as teammates, robotic systems will need to reason about their missions, move through the world in a tactically correct way, observe salient events in the world around them, communicate efficiently with Soldiers and other autonomous systems and effectively perform a variety of mission tasks.
Researchers from the U.S. Army Research Laboratory (ARL) Human Research and Engineering Directorate (HRED) are developing robot intelligence that will enable robots to successfully navigate in their environment when given a voice command by a human.
The Symbolic and Sub-Symbolic Robotics Intelligence Control System (SS-RICS), which was developed by HRED in cooperation with Towson State University in 2004, combines symbolic and sub-symbolic representations of knowledge into a unified control structure. The system is a goal-oriented production system, based loosely on the cognitive architectures, the Adaptive Character of Thought-Rational (ACT-R) and Soar, which is a cognitive architecture from the University of Michigan.
The goal is to develop a system capable of performing a wide variety of autonomous behaviors under a variety of battlefield conditions.
"We have found that in order to simulate complex cognition on a robot, many aspects of cognition (long term memory and perception) needed to be in place before any generalized intelligent behavior can be produced," said Troy Kelley, cognitive robotics team leader, HRED. "In working with ACT-R, we found that it was a good instantiation of working memory, but that we needed to add other aspects of cognition including long term memory and perception to have a complete cognitive system."
Cognition arises from a collection of different algorithms, each with different functionalities, which together, produce the integrated process of cognition. This is also known as a functionalist representation. HRED is developing SS-RICS to be a modular system, or as a collection of modular algorithms, each group of algorithms with different responsibilities for the functioning of the overall system. The important component is the interaction or interplay amongst these different algorithms, which leads to an integrated cognitive system.
"We are not necessarily attempting to produce a neurological representation of the individual components of the brain (thalamus, amygdale)," said Kelley. "The basic idea is that we are trying to use psychological theory to augment robotics development, especially in areas of learning and memory."
Such examples include getting a robot to learn what a hallway or door is. The robots are exposed to a variety of different hallways and doors and then specific features are pulled out to incorporate a general rule for what they are, but need to be flexible.
"For example, in a foreign country you may see blankets or gates used as a door," said Kelley. "A human is born with a lot of low level stuff that a robot would have to be programmed for – it's tough to get a robot to think like a person."
The three functional components that HRED is developing to program the robots include memory, language and perception (such as color recognition). HRED has been concentrating on implementations of human memory as a way reducing the computational load faced by autonomous systems.
For example, it is understood from psychology experiments that humans load elements from long term memory into working memory when they are given a problem solving task. Once long term memories are accessed, humans are then able to concentrate on a specific task. This separation of long term memories from working memory allows for increased computation efficiency because only the knowledge related to a specific task are searched during problem solving.
This implementation can be replicated on an autonomous system to help reduce the computational load. Other human memory implementations for autonomous systems would include memory decay (forgetting unimportant information) and associative learning (things that happen together get remembered together).
Kelley and his team have traveled numerous times to Fort Indian Town Gap in Grantville, Pa., in support of the Robotics Collaborative Technology Alliance (RCTA). At the MOUT site, which is used to train Soldiers in conducing military operations on urban terrain, Kelley has worked to improve indoor navigation for autonomous systems.
"Typical indoor environments do not have reliable access to GPS information and autonomous systems cannot use this information for navigation," said Kelley.
Kelley has worked to take a more human-based approach by using landmark-based navigation.
"Humans use landmarks and dead reckoning to navigate in unfamiliar indoor environments," said Kelley. "We are working to develop an autonomous implementation of human-based landmark navigation to help robots get around indoors."
Throughout the world, robots are being developed and used for many different reasons and purposes – such as in the private sector for health care, manufacturing and work in dangerous or remote areas where humans are at risk. Additional work is being done in law enforcement for bomb disposal, hostage situations and autonomous surveillance of high valued areas.
"I know the Japanese have been attempting to develop robots to be as realistic as possible. However, I have seen research that shows that people sometimes find it difficult to interact with a robot that looks human-like because they find it uncomfortable or 'creepy.' Instead people would rather interact with a robot that looks like a robot – they find this more comforting for some reason," said Kelley. "This could be an issue going forward if robots are expected to interact with non-combatants at check points or in hostage situations," he added.
"In many ways, what Troy and his team are working on is a much more difficult and needed area for the military than what the private sector is working," said Dr. Pamela A. Savage-Knepshield, chief of the Human Factors Integration Division within HRED. "What Troy is doing will make it easier for our Soldiers to communicate and partner with robots to accomplish dangerous missions."
Source: U.S. Army Research Laboratory